Thin and thick and the two-pillar test

Steven Ratner’s book measures international core norms against a standard of “thin justice”. That justice is thin, because it is less demanding than the standard we would use to judge domestic law and domestic institutions, “it is a justice that reflects the thinness of the community in which it operates” (p. 90, see also p. 416). The distinction between domestic thickness and international thinness is inspired by and parallels Michael Walzer’s thick and thin morality. Ratner does not espouse a radical cosmopolitanism which claims that the standards of justice need to be independent from state boundaries, and which would not allow for distinctions based on the nationality of involved persons or on the territoriality of situations.

In the book, Ratner undertakes three operations: First, he identifies and fleshes out the thin-justice-standard. Importantly, “thin” does not mean “procedural” only, but has some substance. The standard consists of two principles or “pillars”, as Ratner calls them. The first pillar is the advancement of international and intra-state peace, the second pillar is the respect for basic human rights. In addition to a norm’s capacity to further peace and/or human rights, Ratner (at some places) employs two additional criteria: procedural fairness, as an expression of internal morality vis-à-vis participants and as an outgrowth of the rule of law (p. 409), and/or the prospects of such a norm for compliance.

In that Sentenza, the Corte refused to give effect to the ICJ’s judgment (in) Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy) of 3 February 2012, in which the ICJ had upheld the principle of state immunity against allegations of serious human rights violations of German state organs committed during the Second World War.

Sentenza No. 238 is important not only because it concerns the persisting tension between respecting (state) immunity and protecting human or fundamental rights (see for a recent publication Anne Peters/Evelyne Lagrange/Stefan Oeter/Christian Tomuschat (eds), Immunities in the Age of Global Constitutionalism (Leiden: Brill 2015)), but – maybe even more importantly – because it concerns the relationship between international law (in the shape of a judgment by the ICJ) and domestic law, as applied by a domestic (constitutional) court.

Just the latest item in the sequence of domestic courts’ resistance against decisions of international bodies

The Corte relied on its established case-law on the effects of European Union law, notably on the doctrine of controlimiti in order to erect a barrier to the “introduction” of the ICJ judgment into the domestic legal order: “As was upheld several times by this Court, there is no doubt that the fundamental principles of the constitutional order and inalienable human rights constitute a ‘limit to the introduction (…) of generally recognized norms of international law’ (…) and serve as ‘counterlimits’ [controlimiti] to the entry of European Union [and now international] law” (Sentenza No. 238, in “The law”, para. 3.2.). Read the rest of this entry…

Resolution 2178 is not in itself the basis for criminalising the behaviour it seeks to suppress. On the contrary, it resembles the classic suppression conventions, i.e. international treaties imposing the obligation on contracting parties to prohibit individual forms of conduct in their national law and, where applicable, to criminalise and punish them.

So no foreign fighter-suspect could be tried and sentenced on the legal basis of Res. 2178 alone. But the reason is not, I submit, that a Security Council resolution could never – from the perspective of international law − function as a “lex” in the sense of the principle nulla poena sine lege. The reason is that the “lex” here does not in itself explicitly establish the crime, but on the contrary explicitly asks states to do to, through their domestic criminal law. Res. 2178 makes it amply clear in its wording that it does not intend to establish the criminal offence directly. It may well be that under the domestic law of some countries, the understanding of nulla poena is stricter. However, if we want to uphold a functioning system of global governance, states and scholars must develop an “internationalised” principle of legality that need not consist only in the lowest common denominator but which is informed by values of global constitutionalism.

Previous Security Council resolutions directly addressing individuals

Resolutions combatting terrorism and piracy

Previous Security Council resolutions had not imposed any obligations on terrorists or terror-suspects as such; they addressed only states (for instance, res. 1624 (2005), para. 1(a); res. 1540 (2004) on weapons of mass destruction). The same is true of all UN Security Council resolutions on piracy (e.g., UNSC res. 1838 (2008)). Read the rest of this entry…

At a summit meeting of 24 September in which over 50 government representatives were heard, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2178 (2014) which foresees measures to contain the travel of and support for persons intending to participate in terror acts, notably against the background of the rise of the group “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) and the Al-Nusra front and other affiliates of Al-Qaida.

Resolution 2178 “reaffirms” what previous resolutions since 9/11 had found, namely that “terrorism [normally committed by natural persons] … constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security” (preamble first indent; see previously, e.g., UNSC res. 1368 (2001)). In preamble indent 12, the Council defines a “new threat”, namely the “foreign terrorist fighter threat” which “includes, among others, individuals supporting acts or activities of Al-Qaida and its cells”.

Most paragraphs of the res. 2178 are, in their structure, not novel. They oblige states to adopt measures, and “ensure in their domestic laws” (para. 6) to suppress, combat, prosecute, and penalise the recruiting, organising, transporting, and equipping of individuals travelling for the purpose of perpetrating terrorist acts, e.g. in paras 2, 5, 6, 8. The obligations to criminalise certain behaviour seem, however, quite far reaching as also pointed out by Kai Ambos.

One interesting feature of res. 2178 is that it directly addresses individuals: Operative para. 1 “demands that all foreign terrorist fighters disarm and cease all terrorist acts and participation in the conflict”. The three interrelated questions discussed in this post are whether res. 2178, firstly, creates binding international legal obligations for individuals themselves; secondly, whether (some of) the resolution’s provisions are directly applicable in the domestic order of the UN Member states; and thirdly, whether the non-observance of these individual obligations constitute a crime by virtue of the resolution itself.

International individual obligations flowing from Res. 2178?

The question is whether Res. 2178 is able to impose legally binding international obligations on the individuals addressed. Is the resolution itself the legal basis for an obligation of “foreign terrorist fighters” to desist from forging identity papers, to desist from travelling to the combat field of ISIS, to recruit volunteers, and of course to refrain from committing terrorist acts, and the like? Read the rest of this entry…

There is a lingering sentiment on this blog (see the posts by Nico Krisch and Christian Marxsen) that “the Kosovo issue” has facilitated the blatant violations of international law recently committed by Russia with regard to Crimea (notably the unlawful annexation of that territory), and that “the West’s” behaviour in the Kosovo context now prevents clear condemnations and robust reactions towards these violations. That view has also been espoused elsewhere (see, e.g., Marcelo Kohen, “L’ Ukraine et le respect du droit international”, Le Temps, 13 March 2014 and Bruno Simma, “The West is hypocritical” (interview), Der Spiegel, 7 April 2014). The basic idea is that “the West” now pays the price for Kosovo, and that such a situation was predictable (and has been predicted) by those who now deplore it, and allows them to think (or even to say): “Well, we warned you from the beginning on, and this is now what comes out of it … so we were right”.

In this post, I would like to investigate the soundness of this position. We first have to ask what is meant by “the Kovoso issue”. Actually “Kosovo” refers to two events: not only to the sponsoring of Kosovo’s independence in 2008, but also to the possible unlawfulness of NATO’s military intervention of 1999. Both events were politically linked, and they concerned three different core norms of international law: the prohibition on the use of force, territorial integrity/inviolability of boundaries, and the self-determination of peoples.

In the Crimea crisis, all three norms are again at stake: Russia both relies on its right or even responsibility to intervene with military means to prevent human rights abuses committed against ethnic Russians and Russian citizens (humanitarian type /R2P-type intervention) and on the Crimean (or even Eastern Ukrainian) right to secession based on the right to self-determination whose exercise in Crimea led to a disruption of Ukrainian territorial integrity.

Yesterday, on 15 April 2014, Ukrainian interim president Turtschinov considered to hold, simultaneously with the presidential elections, a referendum on regional competences in Ukraine. On 8 April 2014, separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk proclaimed that they would hold a referendum on the independence of that Eastern region of Ukraine. Some days before, representatives of the Crimean Tatars announced that they sought to hold a referendum on their political autonomy within Crimea.

On 16 March 2014, the population of Crimea had overwhelmingly voted in favour of joining the Russian Federation. The population was asked to choose between the following alternative: “1) Are you in favour of Crimea joining the Russian Federation as a subject of the Russian Federation?” or “2) Are you in favour of re-establishing the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Crimea and Crimea’s status as a part of Ukraine?” The maintenance of the territorial and status quo was not given as an option in that referendum, and no international observers were admitted. With a voter turnout of 83.1 %, 93 % answered with a “Yes” to the second question, and thus pronounced themselves in favour of joining the Russian Federation.

The spokespersons of the Tatars now declare that their ethnic group had boycotted the referendum of 16 March, and assert that the majority of Tatars would have preferred to stay within Ukraine. Tatars currently form about 10 percent of the Crimean population. Probably hundreds of thousands of Tatars were killed, starved, and were deported from the 1920s to the 1940s under Soviet policy. The new government of Crimea rejects the idea of a politically autonomous territory for the Crimean Tatars but holds that the Tatars can only claim “cultural autonomy”.

The 16 March referendum, and announced further territorial referendums in Ukraine, place in the limelight the problématique of this legal institution. Are not the outcomes of referendums in ethnically mixed units most often ethnically pre-determined? And does not the resort to a referendum lead to ever smaller subgroups which again seek to detach themselves from a larger one? After all, the Ukrainian people, including the Crimean population, had some 20 years ago voted in favour of independence from the Soviet Union. (See on the 1991 referendum in Ukraine Anne Peters, Das Gebietsreferendum im Völkerrecht (Baden-Baden: Nomos 1995), 184-88; specifically on previous Crimean referendums ibid., 190-91, 211-15). That Ukrainian referendum of 1 December 1991 had been at the time widely appreciated as having rung the death knell for the dissolution of the USSR one week later, when the Agreement Establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States of Minsk of 8 December 1991 declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. But even before that date, and later, Crimean politicians had several times (in 1991, 1992, 1994, and so on) planned and sometimes held “polls” on a special status of Crimea.

This post postulates that, as a matter of international customary law, and as a matter of legal consistency and fairness, a free territorial referendum is emerging as a procedural conditio sine qua for any territorial re-apportionment. However, the 16 March referendum was not free and fair, and could not form a basis for the alteration of Crimea’s territorial status. Read the rest of this entry…

On 12 and 13 February 2014, heads of states will meet at a London summit on the trafficking of endangered species convened by British Prime Minister David Cameron. The background to this initiative is the increasingly acknowledged link between wildlife poachers, traffickers, and armed conflict in some regions of Africa. According to the WWF, over 20,000 elephants are killed each year for their ivory tusks, many of them in central African conflict zones.

In two recent resolutions of January 2014, on the Central African Republic (res. 2134), and on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (res. 2136), the Security Council (SC) authorized targeted sanctions against poachers, wildlife product traffickers, and against persons and entities pulling the strings. The resolutions were primarily designed to target a number of armed rebel groups operating in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the Central African Republic. The United Nations (UN) suspects various armed groups, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, Somalia’s Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group and Sudan’s Janjaweed militia, to use the illegal ivory trade as a source of generating finances or otherwise to benefit from the illegal wildlife trade. With these resolutions, the Council de facto qualified wildlife poaching and trafficking as a threat to the peace. Although this statement is at least implicit in the resolutions, the rationale remains anthropocentric, as will be shown in this post.

Res. 2134 and 2136: targeted sanctions against wildlife poachers

Under res. 2134 and 2136 states must adopt sanctions, namely freezing assets and restricting travel, on any individual or entity found to be involved in wildlife trafficking. Practically speaking, the resolutions mean that traffickers must be targeted by officials from different government agencies such as interior and finance ministries, and customs. Read the rest of this entry…

UN member states remain caught between the obligation to carry out Security Council decisions under Art. 25 of the UN Charter and the obligation to respect international or regional human rights guarantees. The chamber judgment of 26 November 2013 in Al-Dulimi, No. 5809/08, is the second decision of the European Court of Human rights (ECtHR) on targeted sanctions after Nada (ECtHR (Grand Chamber), Nada v. Switzerland, No. 10593/08, judgment of 12 Sept. 2012). In contrast to the constellation in Nada, the UN member states (here Switzerland) had no leeway at all to implement the Iraq sanctions imposed by UN SC Res. 1483. However, because the UN sanctions regime did not guarantee “equivalent protection”, the Bosphorus-presumption that the states’ implementing measures are in conformity with the European Convention of Human rights (ECHR) did not apply – in other words, it did not help the state that it had no leeway. Strasbourg examined in full whether Art 6 ECHR had been lawfully restricted by Switzerland and found that this was not the case. On the contrary, the Swiss Federal Tribunal’s refusal to scrutinize the merits of Al-Dulimi’s complaint (with a view to Art. 103 UN Charter), had undermined the very essence of Art. 6 ECHR and therefore Switzerland violated the Convention.

By insisting on full responsibility of ECHR members for violations of the Convention, independently of their “strict” obligations under Security Council resolutions, Strasbourg has in Al-Dulimi stabilized the catch-22-situation. This blog post argues that member states should not be left off the hook, but also calls for responsibilizing the United Nations. Read the rest of this entry…

This is Part II of a post assessing the international law implications of the U.S. National Security Agency’s global spying program. Part I focused the general international law implications of the program. This part focuses on potential violations of human rights law and breaches of the law of diplomacy.

Constitutional fundamental rights binding the European states

In probably all surveilled states, citizens enjoy a constitutional right to privacy which has been affected by secret surveillance measures by the NSA. Fundamental rights embodied in European constitutions bind only the territorial state, not the USA. The territorial states’ responsibility under their own constitutional law could be involved through their condonement, toleration, or by just refraining from protesting against surveillance measures by the NSA.

In Germany, the secrecy of communication is protected by Art. 10 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz, GG). This fundamental right may be lawfully restricted. The principal relevant legislation in Germany is the Gesetz zur Beschränkung des Brief-, Post und Fernmeldegeheimnisses as of 26 June 2001, colloquially called the G10-Act. This Act allows for measures to repel “dangers to the troops of the non-German contracting parties of the NATO treaty” (§ 1 of the G10-Act). That Act allows for different types of restrictions of the fundamental right to privacy, for example “strategic limitations”. But all restrictions are tied to specific conditions, for example, “concrete clues” must exist to found a “suspicion”. Also, the Act only authorises specific German agencies to perform surveillance measures, notably the German intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst). Third, specific procedures must be respected. Finally, the affected persons must be informed ex post, and they are guaranteed access to non-judicial remedies. None of these preconditions have been met in the course of NSA-surveillance. It remains to be seen whether German authorities have violated citizens’ fundamental right to privacy by tolerating NSA measures. Read the rest of this entry…

The draft resolution reaffirms the human right to privacy. It calls upon states to take measures to put an end to violations of these rights (operative para. 4 b), calls upon states to review their procedures, practices and legislation concerning the extra-territorial surveillance of private communications (para. 4 b) and calls upon states to establish independent oversight mechanisms capable of ensuring the transparency and accountability of state surveillance of communications (para. 4 d).

Although the draft resolution does not mention the United States or the National Security Agency (NSA), it is indirectly reacting against the NSA’s recent espionage and surveillance activities conducted in a number of European states, including France, Italy, and Spain. This two-part post will focus on surveillance of German officials including the chancellor Angela Merkel and of ordinary persons in Germany by way of example. Spying on government officials concerns general international law, which will be the focus of Part I of this post. Part II will focus on the bugging of the communication of private persons, which implicates human rights law.

Breach of international law vis-à-vis the surveilled states

The interception of communication by government officials, agents, and authorities seems to constitute espionage. However, there are no specific international law norms that would contain or regulate espionage.

Spying has been more common (and more acceptable under international law) during war and under the international rules of armed conflict. If the United States seek to justify their surveillance activities by pointing to the “global war on terror” or, to use the term employed by former US legal adviser Harold Koh, “armed conflict with Al Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces”, the US would first have to show that there is indeed, in Germany, an armed conflict of this type. This seems difficult to demonstrate because the geographic and substantive nexus to the battlefield is lacking. Read the rest of this entry…

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg (Germany) and a professor of international law at the University of Basel (Switzerland). She is member (substitute) of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (since 2011) and served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010-2012). Born in Berlin in 1964, Anne studied at the universities of Würzburg, Lausanne, Freiburg, and Harvard.
Books (authored and co-edited) include: Transparency in International Law (CUP 2013); Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (OUP 2012); Conflict of Interest in Global, Public and Corporate Governance (CUP 2012); The Constitutionalization of International Law (OUP 2011); Non-state Actors as Standard Setters (CUP 2009); Women, Quotas and Constitutions (Kluwer 1999).

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